Old Darlington

By DAVID GREEN

It's not good to have a fixation on the past, and romantic recollections of "good old days" are usually rose-tinted distortions of how those days really were. But I miss the old Darlington Raceway.

I wish I still had the tri-fold brochure advertising the 1965 Southern 500 that was once part of my racing memorabilia collection. It was new when I first got it. I examined and re-read it until its glossy paper was tattered. In my mind's eye, I can clearly see the picture of Buck Baker's Ray Fox Dodge on the way to victory in the '64 race, the 15th running of the Labor Day classic.

I had a fascination with the race and the Darlington track that was very much akin to the reverence I have always had for Indianapolis Motor Speedway and the Indy 500. I saw the the two tracks and their signature races as equals in the motor sports world.

One of my favorite memories of Darlington is the 1980 spring race, the CRC Chemicals Rebel 500. In those days, the cars were gridded on the front straightaway instead of on pit road. My media credential gave me access to the grid and I must have gotten a hundred great candid driver photos that I was able to put to good use in my job as sports editor of The Gaffney (S.C.) Ledger the rest of the year.

Standing inside Turn 4 and watching the cars thunder off the banking onto the straightaway, with the roar of engines echoing off the concrete wall and the underside of the flat roofs covering the grandstands, was mesmerizing to me. At the other end of pit road, watching the drivers maneuver into single file as they approached Turn 1, diving in and sliding up impossibly close to the steel guard rail, was equally awe-inspiring.

Years later, with International Speedway Corp. as the new owner, renovation plans were announced. The old track would be reoriented, with the finish line moving from the north straightaway to the south side of the irregular oval. A new grandstand would replace the old concrete one on what used to be the backstretch.

There wasn't enough real estate between the track and four-lane S.C. 151-34 to suitably expand the original frontstretch grandstand, planners felt.

I thought the renovation was a travesty. I have never gotten used to the flip-flopped racetrack.

But I suppose it's better than if they had plowed it up and brought in the giant cookie-cutter and installed a sanitary, 1.5-mile trioval. At least it is still Darlington, the same crotchety "Lady in Black." It still produces real racing -- by that I mean races where the action may be intense, as in a Dale Earnhardt versus Ernie Irvan duel in 1993 or '94 or the memorable Ricky Craven-Kurt Busch finish in the 2003 Carolina Dodge Dealers 400, or where the individual performance of the winner is so impressive, as when the 45-year-old (and supposedly "over the hill") Baker outfoxed the young rising stars in '64.

No, Darlington does not offer, never has and never will, the kind of racing that mainstream fans nowadays seem to prefer. There's no three-, four- or five-wide duels. There are never 3,467 lead changes in any race.

It's a classic, challenging, driver's race track. For fans who appreciate that, there's no track like it.

Thank goodness we still get one dose of it each year, even if the race starts and finishes a half-lap away from where it is supposed to.